A Voice of the Past
by VEKTOR
Summary: [Corvo x Jessamine] After being dishonored and betrayed by people he thought he could trust, Corvo Attano loses himself on the path of vengeance. Hearing nothing but the taunting whispers of the Heart the Outsider left with him, the hushed words eventually begin to make some kind of sense. Can Corvo ever know what his Empress thought of him before he failed her? The Heart hopes so.


There are many he has to kill.

The important ones are the only ones anyone remembers.

But Corvo Attano has many he must kill.

Most of them are forgotten, and he feels largely indifferent to their deaths. Some of them scream. Some of them don't have a chance. Grasping the threads of time itself in his cold fingers, firing bullets at them such that they don't even have a chance to evade, he murders them. Some of them never see him until he leaps from a rooftop and their bodies become well-acquainted with his blade. Some of them, he throws off great heights. The only thing they have in common is that the Heart he carries with him always whispers something in his ear. He can never tell what it is. Yes, he feels nothing for the moment they die, but does regret what he has become.

At night, it becomes difficult to sleep.

He wakes with tears staining his face and a desire to scream. He never screams. He never speaks. The one person he wished could have heard his voice is gone now.

He crushes every mirror. Hates seeing that mask. Hates seeing his own face even more. He sees her face instead of his whenever he looks at the cracks, whenever he looks at what's been broken.

He stays alone whenever he can.

No one needs to see the rage he feels toward the world. Toward himself for failing her.

He thinks about his targets sometimes.

All of them have one thing in common. The Heart whispers.

Two things in common - all die by his hand.

He was supposed to protect her… He was supposed to be her bodyguard… Sometimes when he kills them, he remembers that being an assassin was all he was ever any good at. He could never protect anything. A man like him was only good at seeding death - not preserving life. The fact that she was gone… It just cemented the thought in his sleepless mind.

When he discovers he lives for nothing else but punishing those who took her from him, he realizes he's become a ghost. His existence has become hollow and empty. He wonders if he was ever anything but.

One time… A long time ago… When he'd come home to her and Emily would run up to him, hugging his legs… He never asked her who Emily's father was. Now he'd never have a chance. He remembered the first nights when she'd called him over to her chamber. He was just a tool, and he couldn't even say anything back to her.

The first time she'd put her hand over his seemed so far away. Now the only thing on his hand was that blighted mark! That cursed sigil! The only thing that made him worth anything.

The Heart whispers.

There are many people Corvo Attano must kill.

The whispers become clearer.

As he's about to take the life of yet another one - a guard who has no idea of what he's been involved in, the Heart whispers again. It sounds different this time. The voice seems somehow familiar. His mind recedes to the evenings spent with the Empress on her balcony, the dinners she invited him to just because Emily wanted him there. He loved the little girl as much as he did her mother. He never understood why she wanted him near when he was just given to her mother as a diplomatic gesture… But the young girl's laughs and hops gave the assassin a vague hint of a smile even on days when joy seemed furthest from him.

Thoughts of rage and death rip through him. The beauty and rush of destroying another human's life. Ending them. Letting the very idea of fatality given form tear them to pieces.

_Corvo… Don't do this…_

The Heart whispers.

_Corvo… This is not who you are…_

The Heart does not stop whispering.

_Corvo… You are not an evil man…_

The Heart whispers as if shouting.

_Corvo… Please, I know you must remember me…_

The Heart is always with him.

_Corvo… Protect Emily…_

The Heart hopes he will listen.

_Corvo… Protect my daughter…_

There are many people Corvo Attano must kill.

But there is only one person left Corvo Attano will kill for.

The Heart is always with him.

The Heart whispers.

The Heart does not stop…

_Corvo… Protect our daughter…_

_Corvo… I love you…_


End file.
